Re: Chain of Memories is the Worst Kingdom Hearts Game - The Game Collection Review!
664In this review of Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, SuperDerek examines whether this HD remaster of a remake is worth your time. Spoiler: It's not.
Welcome back to The Game Collection! Last time I talked about Kingdom Hearts, and as I continue to make my way through "The Story So Far," I'll be talking about the second game in the series. Originally, the game was called Chain of Memories on the GameBoy Advance, but the game received a remake on PlayStation 2 three years later called Re: Chain of Memories. So is a remaster of a remake worth your time? Let's find out! I am SuperDerek and this is Re: Chain of Memories!
Intro
In my reviews I tend to lose people 30% of viewers in the first 3 minutes or so. So let me cut to the chase, and I'll explain the rest later. Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories in the 1.5 HD Remix is Square Enix's third release of Chain of Memories. And somehow, after three attempts the game is still a complete mess. The game is the most frustrating experience that I have put myself through for you, my viewers, an I wouldn't wish this upon anyone.
The original release on GameBoy advance may be better. I'm not sure. But Re: Chain of Memories is a trash game. Not because of the convoluted story, not because of the tedium, not because of the lack of exploration of the awesome worlds seen in the original games, no. The game is garbage because of the number one thing that a game needs to focus on. The Gameplay. But I'm getting far, far ahead of myself. Let's reel it back in and go through the game point by point, starting with the story.
Re: Chain of Memories takes place immediately following the events of Kingdom Hearts 1. As the game picks up, Sora, Donald and Goofy are sleeping along the side of the road, presumably the road they were walking along at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1. Sora awakens to a hooded trench-coat wearing mystery-man telling Sora that Sora will need something along the road ahead, and he'll need to lose something dear to him in order to claim it. Cut to Sora, Donald and Goofy arriving at Castle Oblivion. The crew all seem to think their friends are somewhere deep inside the castle, so they set off to explore it.
Along the way through the castle, the crew start to forget things. Mysterious hooded figures tell our heroes that they are being stripped of unnecessary memories in order to remember their true memories.
Objectively, the story and the way it was told is probably the best thing the game has going for it. I don't want to spoil anything for anybody so I'll keep things vague, should the rest of this review not dissuade you from trying to experience it on your own. The game plays out like a psychological mystery, where the crew start to lose their memories of the events of Kingdom Hearts 1 as they ascend Castle Oblivion. On each floor, Sora revisits worlds he explored in Kingdom Hearts 1, retracing their steps. Sora and company realize what's happening, they are torn between wanting to leave the castle or push onward, not knowing what they might forget next. It's a pretty spooky dilemma, and it was interesting to watch it play out.
Subjectively though, It was all too easy to draw parallels to dimentia and Alzheimer's disease, which hit a little close to home for me. And the carefree way in which our protagonists coped with memory loss was bizarre and difficult to believe. And some of the talk about how they couldn't possibly lose their most important memories seemed like the height of ignorance. Obviously the game was probably not meant to represent mental illness or even draw any parallels. However that's where *my* mind went with it, and Square Enix's apparent tone-deafness with the subject just felt uncanny.
The worlds presented within Re: Chain of Memories are a step down from those found in Kingdom Hearts 1, owing to the game's GameBoy Advance roots. Each floor of Castle Oblivion consists of a series of rooms. At the doorway to the next room, the player can play room cards that determine what kind of room the next room is, such as a save point, a room with weak enemies, or extra tough enemies, or treasure rooms, and so on. These rooms are themed to suit the world they represent, but are extremely repetitive and basic. These are not supposed to represent the real worlds that Sora had visited, but rather are representations made from Sora's memory. The end result is simply put, bizarre.
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